Twelfth+Caluri+6

__The 12th Amendment__
 * by Christina Z, Anissa N, and Patrick D.**

What is the 12th Amendment about?
 * The twelfth amendment states that the president and the vice president of the United States must be voted for by ballot. You may have seen your parents vote for the president on election day. But the amendment deals with more than that. First you have to understand the Electoral College. This is not where electors go to school as you may think. This is a system of indirect election. The Electoral College was created so that there wouldn't be too much power among the people and Congress.**

When was the amendment proposed/ratified? by Congress on December 9, 1803. This amendment was ratified on June 15, 1804.This may seem like a long time since it was created in 1803 but some states took a while to ratify it. The states that ratified in chronological order were; North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Georgia and New Hampshire. New Hampshire was the state that allowed the 12th amendment to be put into the Constitution by ratifying it on June 15, 1804; the same date that it was put in the Constitution! Tennesee ratified the amendment after it was placed in the Constitution on July 27, 1804. Believe it or not but some other countries use the Electoral College system. Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Nepal, Pakistan, Trinidad and India are some of the countries that use the Electoral College System. France also uses this system but only votes for senate which is the upper house of the Parliament of France. Similar systems are used or have been used in other presidential elections around the nation.**
 * The 12th Amendment was proposed[[image:Vote-Button-3.jpg align="right" caption="This is how you are persuaded into voting. "]]

Why was the Electoral College created?
 * During this time the Americans had just won the Revolutionary War and recieved their independence. The framers of the Constitution, also known as the delegates, didn't want the system of election to make the people become to powerful in the choosing of a president. Clearly, the president would partly be like a king. So the framers didn't want to give too much power to a person chosen entirely by the people. The people didn't know that much information and background on the canidates, and there weren't that many ways available to inform people back then. There were only local newspapers. This may not seem like a problem today, but there wasn't any television or radio. As a result, the people might pick a bad president and cause the country to have a bad "ruler".**

Why wasn't the power of voting the president given to Congress?
 * The delegates realized that the citizens' votes wouldn't be that reliable, so some suggested giving most of the power to Congress (the legeslative branch of the new government; creates laws). However, the whole point of the new government and the Constitution was to have three branches that had equal power. None of the branches had more or less power than the other. If the framers of the Constitution gave the power of selecting the president and vice president to Congress, it would have more power than the Executive Branch (president) and the Judicial Branch (Supreme Court)!**

How does the Electoral College work?
 * The system of the Electoral College is semi-complicated. Each state is given representatives to[[image:http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/electorl.gif width="429" height="272" align="right" caption="This shows how many votes each state gets in the Electoral College."]] the college. This number is the same quantity of the senators and representatives that are in the house of representatives. As you may already know, each state has two senators regardless, and have at least one representative according to its size. As a result each state has at least three representatives. Each state's legislature appoints electors by their own method. Most of the time three electors are chosen automatically. The three representatives are all tied together with one House member. The electors get together and vote for the president and vice president. The votes are set to Congress. They are counted and the winner is announced. If there is a tie, then the House of Representatives chooses a winner from the top 5 canidates. The person in second place is vice president (this applies all the time).**

What is the controversy in this system?
 * There are some down sides to the Electoral College system. The system allows the possibility of a candidate losing the popular vote of the people. This issue is being talked about in controversy around the nation. About 90 million people vote in the United States. However, those votes actually enforce the elector's vote. Therefore, the //electors// are actually voting for the president. It almost do aways with the people's votes. People are now questioning whether we actually need the Electoral College anymore.**

What is the goal of taking away the Electoral College?
 * The goal of taking away the electoral college is so that whoever has the popular vote will ensure the canidate's victory. This has been a problem in past years. For example, Al Gore ran for president in 2000 and won the popular vote. However, he lost when the elctors in the electoral college. Also, in 1888 Grover Cleveland was a canidate for president. He won a large majority of the peoples' vote, yet he lost to Benjamin Harrison. This was caused by the Electoral College.**

How is it possible that someone who wins the popular vote will lose in the Electoral College?
 * Let's say that Candidate A wins a very large majority of the popular vote in a small state like Vermont, winning all 3 of its electoral votes. But Candidate B beats A by only 3 votes in the popualr vote of a larger state like Maryland. Candidate B recieves all of Maryland's electoral votes (which is 10) and would lead in the Electoral College 10 to 3.**

__Anissa's Article:__
 * My article clearly explains who really elects the President of the United States. Of course, every four years on election day your parent's votes do count but there is more to it. When you vote for a presidential candidate you are actually instructing the electors of the Electoral College from your state to cast their votes for the most popular candidate. Each elector votes once and with the eight state electors, you would have eight votes for the same candidate. So these eight votes go along with who the state voted for. Currently there are 538 electors who are required to have 270 votes to be elected. If none of the candidates win 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment takes action and the election is now in the hands of the House of Representatives. The presidential candidate who comes in second is elected the Vice President automatically. The down side to this (and there are more) is that states with larger populations get more Electoral College votes which gives them the advantage as to the new president. Another down side with this system is that there is the possibility of a candidate losing the popular vote throughout the nation.**

__Patrick's Article:__ My article explains how New Jersey law makers support popular votes. The state senate had voted on Thursday to approve delivering all the states electorial votes for the president to be the winner of the popular vote. The New Jersey Governer has been a supporter of the National popular vote. This compact can only take an effect if a majority of the states agree to it. The only state that has agreed to it is Maryland. There are other states that agree to the compact. Those states are Illinois, Arkansas, Colorado, and North Carolina. Those who support this compact believe all votes are important and guarantees the presidency to the person who has the most votes.

My article is about how New Jersey is close to joining a compact that will get rid of the Electoral College. If enough states agree with the idea, New Jersey will definitely go with it. Maryland is the only state to pass the compact into law so far. The state has 10 votes in the Electoral College. Some state legislatures have endorsed the compact, too. It has been passed by both houses of the Illinois Legislature and one house in Arkansas, Colorado and North Carolina. However, some governors in California and Hawaii have vetoed bills to join. The democrats want the power to go to the people so that the person who wins the popular vote wins the election. Reblicans, however, don't like the bill because the votes in smaller states such as Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire won't be paid attention to.** To learn more, follow this link to [|NJ Nears Undermining Electoral College].
 * __Christina's Article:__**

How do the issues which prompted the creation of the amendment compare with the issues they are applied to today?
 * The issue that made the amendment be created was so that the people have less power in choosing the president. The framers thought that giving the citizens most of the power to elect the //president// would result in a popular, but unskilled president. The candidate that would be the best may not be voted for in the popular vote, so they made the popular vote a "reinforcement" for the Electoral College. However, today, people are critizing the Electoral College and most think we can do without it.**